Amen, brother. As Martin Fowler writes, "Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand."

If Mr. not-Einstein had actually measured some production issue that could be traced back to commenting, he could always have written a filter that stripped them before production. My guess, though, is even he didn't believe this excuse; it was just a glib thing to say in hopes of wiggling out of trouble for being a negligent coder.